The first time I prayed in a car, was when the mad Persian (a.k.a. Iranian) sardined the four of us onto the backseat of his plush Mercedes and in full tilt chased through the dense traffic of Barcelona to the cathedral of Sagrada Familia. On arrival I was still at the Amen, when the mad Persian hounded us up one of ornamental towers of the still-under-construction cathedral. I didn’t count the steps, but I suspect it must have been over three hundred. The view of the city was misty and magnificent.

Sagrada Familia, with construction cranes

The building of this cathedral began in 1882, when Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect, was thirty. For various reasons building was slow. By the time Gaudi died in 1926, it had not been completed. The story is that building plans had been lost and Gaudi’s concepts were not viable. This is how I saw it more than forty years later. Yet the main portals and the towers held an unforgettable fascination.

The Basilica of the Sagrada Familia is like nothing I have seen. The art critic Rainer Zerbst says, “It is probably impossible to find anything like it in the entire history of art.”

The main portals have been modified in recent years with expressive gothic frames in front of the original entrances.

Sagrada Familia, with gothic frames

And these original entrances – they riveted me. They look like the entrances of salagtite caves, with brown cement still dripping from the arcs. The colour texture of the whole façade of the church looks as if it has risen out of the ground. Yet the towers, striking rounded forms, come across as playful even artificial.

Figures in the cathedral

Basilica de la Sagrada Familia

It is a pity that I did not see more of Gaudi’s architecture in Barcelona and Madrid. From images I can say that the organic character, strange and dreamlike, is true to the eccentric spirit of Catalonia and has yielded some of the most original art in history.

Antoni Gaudi in 1880

The journey back to the campsite with the mad Persian was more sedate.